The Price of Friendship
by Darkfyre1607
Summary: In the aftermath of a devastating attack on his hive, Stinger, now a fully-fledged changeling warrior, is forced to go through a complicated training exercise. After completing it alongside his broodmates, Carapace and Spinneret, he comes across a strange tunnel. He's amazed by the discoveries he manages to make inside. An oncoming invasion of Canterlot seems boring in comparison.
1. Hide and Seek

The next day was spent ferrying love from available prisoners to the plethora of changelings sprawled out on the floor. I flew up to a green cocoon, drained all the love I could without irreparably harming the creature inside, and hovered down to drone after drone, lighting my horn and forcing a pink stream of love into each limp body. I could see my work take hold in the corner of my eye as I slowly drifted my way through the hive. Every changeling I had worked on groaned, shook, and stumbled to its hooves, before grasping the situation and hurrying off to collect love for the others.

It took quite a long time, but eventually, the hive's residents had all recovered. Most of them immediately marched off to forget their terror and humiliation by ripping either each other or defenseless punching bags to shreds. I wanted to join them, but I was far too exhausted. Curling up to sleep with the knowledge that Carapace was less than a meter below me was a good enough end to the day.

When Queen Chrysalis learned of what had transpired at the hive, she was absolutely furious. She stomped through the gates in a rage, glaring down at Carapace in contempt as she passed. Before long, she summoned every changeling who had been involved in the incident to her throne room. As Spinneret, Carapace, and I approached the queen's chambers, Carapace grimaced. "I should have been there to fight with you. I'm supposed to be a warrior! The queen must be ready to drain me dry."

We stood in ranks before the queen's throne, silently waiting for the last unlucky drones to arrive. The throne room was massive, with holes in every wall, small rock formations scattered across the floor, and, finally, the Queen's glorious throne. So this was the artifact that protected the entire changeling kingdom from enemy magic. Its base was shaped like its occupant's twisted horn, and its back flared out like her crown. It was so tall that Chrysalis herself could stand on it without her horn coming to its top. The sight of my queen's regal, imposing figure glaring down on us in disappointment filled me with shame, even though I knew that I was one of the few changelings in the room with nothing to be ashamed of. Maybe I would be promoted to commander! Perhaps I would switch ranks with Carapace. It would be unfortunate for him, but it could be interesting to be in command of the battle-loving warrior.

Before long, Queen Chrysalis gave her admonishing rant. "The changeling army is an unstoppable force. It had destroyed more cities than I care to list. It has infiltrated grand nations with control over the forces of nature themselves. It has devoured the love of those that could be called gods. Yet despite possessing an ingrained database consisting of more knowledge than any other on Equus, you all charged directly into the range of the one artifact that could pose a danger within the Changeling Kingdom. After noticing the piles of your defeated brothers, you still continued to charge head-on into an obvious threat. Out of the hundreds of changelings present in the hive at the time of the deer attack, three of you managed to launch a counterstrike. THREE. Even these uniquely competent drones failed to utilize obvious strategies, such as reviving their fallen siblings or disguising themselves in order to trick the enemy. As you have all proven yourselves to be unbelievably brain-dead, you will take part in a training course. You will all be sent into the deepest tunnels of the Hive. Each of you will remain there until you prove yourself tactically competent enough to capture twenty other changelings. If you are captured, you will remain inside of the tunnels for an additional fortnight. Now GO!"

The lowest tunnels of the hive were far darker and more claustrophobic than those above them. The more confusing terrain wouldn't have been a problem if the queen hadn't blocked our ability to draw knowledge from the hivemind, but without some sort of map, even navigating the hive proper would have been nearly impossible. Within a few minutes of entering the cramped, dusty maze, Spinneret, Carapace and I were completely alone.

We stopped in a ledge above a nexus of tunnels to plan out our strategy. Spinneret, of course, already had an idea. Two of us would wait on the ledge, disguised as rocks, while the third would seek out lone changelings and lure them to the others one by one. Not wanting to spend hours sitting in silence as a rock without the hivemind to entertain me, I volunteered to find our targets.

I glided as a grey barn owl, twisting up and down and left and right through portal after portal without making a sound. Finding a proper victim would be easy. Very few of the changelings involved in this exercise were actually warriors; capturing twenty smiths, enchanters, and builders couldn't be that large of a challenge.

My new, incredibly sensitive ears soon detected the sound of buzzing wings. It appeared that the approaching target was alone, but I decided to wait and see. I swooped, perched on a high rock, and gazed down. As I had guessed, a lone changeling soon approached. I dove down in front of the drone, retook my true form, cast a shield spell around myself, and took off for my allies, making my spell flicker with every hit to lure my prey into the belief that he stood a chance.

By the time I was finally within sight of the ambush, my magic reserves had actually begun to run dry. Even if it wasn't an official warrior, any changeling was a powerful fighter, and being blasted by one every second was something that even my protection spells couldn't absorb forever. I stormed over the hidden ledge just as my shield finally shattered. I was slammed into a wall, and watched, cocooned, as my friends beat my attacker into the ground with blast after blast before he had the chance to prepare a defense.

Now we had a single prisoner held in suspension in our hidden lair. According to the queen, he would be freed in a fortnight, but I doubted that it would take that long to claim nineteen more victims.

The next five victims were around as simple to capture as the first, but the easy targets became rarer and rarer as the hours passed. Eventually, I got bored and started to search in my true form. That left me wide open to an ambush. I was glancing over a small chamber when what had seemed to be a rock leaped out at me in a curtain of green flames, hissing, and cocooned my wings. I returned a hiss of my own and hurled a ball of wax at my enemy's face. He dove out of the way and glued my legs to the ground before I had a chance to cast a shield. Damn! This one knew what he was doing, without my wings I was a sitting duck!

I could barely stay conscious - my head was just outside of a rapidly forming cocoon. I couldn't believe that I was going to lose to a non-warrior! I wanted the chance to fight the strongest changelings here. This was humiliating! Well, at least I would be able to hunt the more vulnerable changelings when I regained consciousness.

I snarled at my enemy, brimming with rage, as wax crept up the sides of my face. I wasn't going to give up before I completely lost mobility. I charged my horn with all the magic I could summon the willpower to access, and expelled a firestorm just as my horn was covered by the cocoon: my flames ripped my prison to shreds.

I pulled myself up and blasted wax directly into my opponent's face, both blinding it and rendering its horn useless. I finished with its head it as it stumbled around trying to pull the sticky substance off of its snout. That had been pure luck! I needed to remember that I wasn't dealing with some useless non-changeling, even if my opponents weren't soldiers, they were still powerful fighters: they merited a good deal of caution.

For our final victims, Spinneret, Carapace, and I went hunting together. Carapace took the form of a bat to scout ahead. He was fast enough to dodge enemy blasts just about every time, revealing a target for the rest of us to gang up on. Eventually, we only needed to capture one more changeling. We circled around the tunnels for hours, but no one seemed to be left. We kept searching until we finally came to a large chamber.

We knew we had found an enemy base the second we looked at the cavern's walls - they were covered with cocoons. The conquered changelings gave off a creepy aura: no loyal drone should be kept in a prison cocoon. We walked farther into the long chasm's halls, our steps echoing through the dark chamber until we finally came to our last opponent, Antenna.

Antenna had changed after fighting deer with us. His gaze radiated nascent confidence in his abilities that allowed his natural love of combat and victory to shine through. I could tell that he was still afraid, but he was definitely enjoying himself. He grinned at us, his horn still covered with wax from his previous victim. "So, do you want to fight? If you can't tell from my collection, I've been doing well in this game. Combat is so much more fun when you aren't afraid of becoming some deer's slave, and I'm pretty good at it. Let's see if I'm better than you."

He remembered the way I fought, so his first move was to aim a blast of wax at my wings. I blocked his shot with a quick shield and leapt up out of his next attack's range. His next few blasts were easy to avoid in the air. Carapace and Spinneret let out wax blasts of their own while I circled Antenna in an attempt to be a distraction, but he realized what we were doing and kept a shield up rather than attacking me. I took on my small wyvern form and rushed to crack open his magical shell, first with fire, and then with my claws. I broke through at the exact second that I ran out of energy to maintain my form, so my allies had to blast Antenna into a cocoon for me. I still needed to work on my shapeshifting.

Once we had captured Antenna, a passage opened up in the ceiling above us. We followed it through to the upper hive and began to return to our normal resting holes to sleep. After watching him cower in fear in my previous interaction with him, it was easy to forget that Antenna was really a skilled warrior. Fighting him had been a difficult, but satisfying experience.

Even now that my access to the hivemind had been fully restored, I had no idea where we were. I had assumed that the tunnel we followed had somehow been summoned by the queen, but it had apparently just appeared at a fortunate time. It had deposited us up outside the hive at an exit I had never used before. The tunnels must have extended far beyond the borders of the hive itself, as we found ourselves in the middle of the swarm's outer territory. I led us through the desert to the main entrance to the hive, finding strange new landmarks on the way. Eventually, my path brought me to another tunnel. Hoping that it led back into the hive, after landing to check it for signs of danger, I climbed down into it, followed by Carapace and Spinneret.

The tunnel led us into _a_ hive, but it wasn't _our_ hive. This structure was entirely underground and had a strange, musty air. After noticing a few features, the new hive began to feel familiar. Once I discovered a perfect replica of the queen's throne room, I realized why. This place was built exactly like the changeling hive: entirely upside down!

As I stumbled through the cold, abandoned replica of my home, I began to notice another inconsistency: this hive never ended. Every time I reached what should have been an exit, the structure's room pattern repeated. Spinneret was overjoyed to see this place, but Carapace hated it. I started out curiously exploring the caverns but understood Carapace's frustration and worry after I had been searching for an exit for a few hours. This place may have looked like our home, but it was empty and dead: it was a horrifying depiction of what our own hive could become if we were ever defeated.

The abandoned tunnels became more and more menacing as time passed. Analyzing every marking was the only activity keeping me from panicking. Spinneret and I discovered several engravings and inscriptions. They all revealed one very important discovery - changelings had once lived here. They didn't serve our Queen, but a monarch named Queen Draconovespa. There were pictures of her everywhere. They typically showed a tall, muscular queen with a small, rounded tuft of webbing-hair hanging in front of her eyes like an antenna, a knife-like horn with a single notch, and massive dragonfly wings. The inscriptions with her name appeared to have been written over something else; the scratched out markings seemed to say Queen Rosedust.

We found even more ruins farther underground. At the very bottom, there was a collection of grey gemstone fragments held up on a strange altar. Just hovering near them brought on a feeling of hunger and emptiness. The carving above it showed a giant sun rising over a beautiful verdant valley.

Other tunnels revealed pictures of a great battle of fairy-like ponies against creatures that almost looked like human witches, with the witches casting some strange spell that surrounded the fairies. Others showed changelings feeding on plant life until it all rotted away, changelings raiding cities, and finally, an amulet that looked eerily like the Jewel of Hate being created from a piece of the shattered stone in the dead hive's tunnels and used by a race of deer to drive the changelings out of their hive. It appeared that Queen Draconovespa was captured in the battle, but her heir, Princess… Chrysalis! Her child-heir Princess Chrysalis led a small group of changelings out of the hive and escaped!

We finally realized that the only exit was the tunnel we had used to enter the hive. As we flew over the dunes on our way home, we silently agreed not to tell the Queen about what we had found.


	2. The Canterlot Tragedy

Within a few weeks, Queen Chrysalis informed us of her latest plan. She was going to impersonate Princess Mi Amore Cadenza (the princess of love herself) and invade Canterlot (the capital of Equestria)! Apparently, the princess's future husband, Shining Shield or something, was known to create a shield over the entire capital in times of emergency, so all of us would need to take part in the invasion to break it down after the Queen had done her part to weaken it. Carapace couldn't wait to fight. He told me that some of the other warriors had said that Equestria had more love than any other nation in the world. Their sickeningly sweet affection for each other had irradiated the ground over the centuries, making almost all nature around their settlements docile and tame.

I took the form of a crow again for the journey; in my anticipation, the flight seemed to pass in minutes. We landed in the trees around a beautiful clearing. Resting in the shade at the end of the clearing sat a beautiful pony princess. I had never seen anything like her-she was a foot taller than me, with pastel pink fur, and both huge wings and a massive horn. According to our spies, she had powerful mind-controlling abilities. She could force any two creatures with even the slightest modicum of attraction between themselves to become hopelessly obsessed with each other.

Out of respect for the alicorn's power, the Queen had all of us attack at once. We ripped off our disguises and launched ourselves at her as a hissing, screeching horde, forcing her screaming form to the ground and sealing her in a cage of wax. Once we had our hostage secured, the Queen copied her appearance and teleported her down into a system of tunnels the spies had discovered inside of the Canterlot mountain. Carvings in the mines indicated that they had once been used by the city's unicorn inhabitants, but had been abandoned when their miners began to disappear. Any exits had long since collapsed, and the maze of tunnels could keep even changelings lost for days. The labyrinth of jewels made a perfect prison.

Queen Chrysalis lunged up into the air on a pair of tacky new angel-like wings, leaving us to hunt in the nearby woods while she prepared the city for our invasion. The forest was a saccharine, grass green garden-the only animals inside were tiny woodland critters like squirrels and voles. Carapace, Spinneret and I decided to split up since any catch we could find here would be far too small for us to share. I buzzed through a few bushes until I ran into a nest of mice. While I crouched and drained them, completely unsatisfied, I wondered how long it would take for us to start draining trees.

By the time that Queen Chrysalis ordered us to advance on the city, the trimmed, horribly sweet glade around us had grown into a wild forest, full of twisted trees and dead undergrowth. The magic that had been maintaining the area's garden-like purity had been enough to keep us in fighting condition for our stay, but we were all ravenous. When the call to break down the city's shield came, we raced towards the city with our eyes glazed and mouths wide with hunger; we looked like a mythical plague of locusts.

I was hovering directly above the greatest city in the pony empire. I could see my prey shambling around through stone streets. I could already taste the love inside them! I grinned and slammed into the giant pink shield keeping me from the feast, as Carapace shouted, "Finally! I've been waiting for this for years!" I cackled and slammed horn-first into the pink border one final time, and burst through it into the city.

I lit my horn and wreathed myself in flames as I dropped into the capitol like a missile. I landed in front of a group of six ponies ripe for draining. Embarrassingly, as I hissed and started to climb out of my landing crater, one of them simply stomped on my head and jumped over me. It didn't matter. I wasn't damaged, and there were thousands of ponies to harvest.

I had just chased down and sucked the life out of my first pony when I received the Queen's order to find and attack the six I had seen at the beginning of the battle. I was a little more nourished at that point, and ready for revenge. After some quick, expectant looks among ourselves, Carapace, Spinneret and I dashed out to join the growing horde charging at the enemies our Queen had marked for capture.

It was still early in the battle, so I didn't have much magic to spend on magical blasts or impressive transformations, neither did any other changeling, at this point, so we silently agreed to use trickery instead of raw power to bring down our foes. There was no way for us to lose, as we outnumbered our enemy to a ridiculous extent. Still, the six ponies put up an impressive fight. I chose the form of the group's purple unicorn just in time to echo her surprisingly intelligent comment: "They're changelings, remember?"

I charged at the white unicorn, hoping that the mare would be unwilling to use her full strength to strike the visage of her friend. I managed to land a single punch to the enemy's face before I was blasted back. I picked myself back up and joined a changeling, disguised as the orange earth-pony, that I assumed was Carapace, in double-teaming the yellow pegasus. We were just about to tackle and cocoon her when the blue pegasus slammed us to the side. These ponies weren't especially strong on their own, but their teamwork was greatly impressive. If my energy reserves were more full, I could have ended this fight in an instant, but without the strength to meaningfully shapeshift, summon a shield, or fire off spells, defeating a measly group of five ponies was taking an annoyingly long time.

In the next few minutes, I smacked a pegasus, threw a unicorn, and was bucked into a wall by an earth pony. Eventually, one of the commanders told us to allow the ponies to reach the castle and to fall into an ambush, so I lay on the ground and played dead. The six fools walked directly into our trap. As they reached the hall, I walked up after them in my true form to block their escape. Spinneret and I were lucky enough to join the guard escorting the prisoners to the queen. Then with the command of "Go! Feed!" We sped off through the palace door to find our next victims.

I ran down a bright green pegasus, tackled it to the ground, ripped into its neck with my teeth, and drained its love, and then partially drained and cocooned the three earth ponies below it. They were all delicious. The rumors of these creatures' incredibly potent love had more truth behind them than I had dared to believe. Then I smelled blood inside of a nearby house, charged inside, and cocooned its inhabitants. Next, I fought an orange unicorn with Carapace's help. It had a pathetically weak grasp on its magic. It could shoot magical beams, but it couldn't form a shield, so Carapace had the perfect opportunity to crawl up behind it and bring it down while I distracted it from the air. It was at the second of our victory that the huge pulse of magic threw every changeling away from the castle. I got the chance to see Carapace be crushed to death, his body crumbling into a bloody mess against a marble wall before I was flung through the sky.


	3. A Way Home

The first thing I remembered after the invasion was waking up alone deep in a forest. It took a few moments for everything to come back to me. Carapace was dead. How could he be dead? No changeling had died in an invasion for generations! If any changeling would die in a fight, it would never be Carapace, he was the strongest warrior I knew, even stronger than me. I was knocked unconscious and thrown out of a city, I had to have hallucinated Carapace's death. I could already hear the call back to the hive, I would find him there.

This forest was dark and filled with black, gnarled trees. The yellow eyes of different beasts could be seen poking out from the shadows. I moved as quickly as I could as I jetted over the undergrowth on the way to the south. I had no idea where I was, but I knew exactly what direction to take to find the hive. As long as I moved quickly, I could lower my chances of encountering a dangerous creature that would delay my return.

As I was about to leave the twisted forest, I heard a familiar scream. Spinneret was here! I crept into the direction of Spinneret's voice, wincing at the low scraping noise my chitin made as I sidled through the thorny undergrowth. Once I came close enough to see the monster my comrade was fighting, I fell stomach first into the brambles. It was a strange chimera, a creature with the body of a goat, the talons of a bird, the head of a wolf, and the horns of a bull. Spinneret was barely dodging its horns, and the creature was moving so quickly that he couldn't land a single blow on it. Rather than aim for the abomination, I set the undergrowth beneath it on fire, creating a barricade between it and Spinneret, before taking the form of a basilisk, freezing my target, and holding it still while the smoke and flames killed it for me.

I outpaced Spinneret for the next few hours, not wanting to talk about the humiliating defeat at Canterlot. We passed through a large valley filled with flowers that stood between a number of mountains, inching along in our true forms to conserve energy. Spinneret eventually broke the silence, "When we reach the hive, I'll use the hivemind's memories of that strange blast to analyze its properties. It could be an incredibly valuable weapon. From what I was able to observe, it recognized every changeling in the city as a target but passed over any other creature. Its blast was impressive, too. Carapace was close to you when the blast hit, right? Did you see any sign of him where you landed?"

"I can't remember precisely what happened-I started to pass out the second I was hit. Carapace can tell you where he ended up once we report back to the queen. You shouldn't have to wait long, the hive is near."

I started to notice evidence of an ancient civilization on the ground as we entered the outskirts of the badlands. The arcane ruins were mainly made of stone and covered with triangular patterns. They were buildings of all different purposes: dispersed huts including circular, flat-roofed structures with walls made of interlocking triangles with removable pieces for windows and doors that retained the traces of squishy nesting material, perfect for nurseries, pyramids filled with shelves and dust-covered books, definitely libraries, immense coliseums made of crisscrossed triangles that could be opened to the skies, comfortable sleeping quarters, roomy stalls with a large entrance area filled with the desiccated remnants of herbs, possibly a hospital, and finally, something as important to changeling history as the broken stone at the bottom of the abandoned hive.

The altar was scorched, shattered, and peppered with scratches and dents that fit the shapes of the broken stone's fragments. The ground was stamped with hoofprints: whole, flutter-pony hooves coming toward the shrine, and hole-filled changeling hooves leaving it, with planes of melted dirt where they changed from one to another. This was where the flutter-ponies had become _us_. After their enemies had put some kind of curse on them, they had come to their mythical sun-stone for help. Perhaps so many had come so quickly that they had completely drained the stone's magic, shattering it, and transforming it, and all of the creatures that worshipped it, into a love-void.

We crossed the border into the badlands a few minutes after seeing the birthplace of the changelings. We weren't alone-thousands of changelings were flooding the area, completing their own journeys home. I scanned the crowd for Carapace but reached the hive before finding him. He was never quite as quick as Spinneret and I; I needed a short rest, he would probably reach us by the time I woke up.

Carapace was taking longer than anticipated. He missed the Queen's fiat ordering all drones to train and practice advanced magic daily. Patrols were oddly grim without him next to me, but magic training was novel enough to distract me. I could perform impressive feats of combat magic thoughtlessly, but transfiguring rocks into specific minerals or charming spears to throw themselves left me gasping for breath.

The act of magic not directly related to combat that I was most talented with seemed to be mind-magic. I levitated one of the many cocoons located in the practice room to the ground, set up a shield around a fifteen-foot radius of it, and opened it. The prisoner I had chosen was a light-brown unicorn stallion with a trombone cutie mark. It screamed and charged into my shield when it saw me, and then, realizing that it was trapped, it started firing beams of magic at me, probably hoping to free itself by defeating me. I easily blocked all of its attacks, and slowly stalked toward it. When I came near enough, I drained some of its love to weaken it and then built a magical connection to its brain. As it squirmed, I started to force my will onto it. I ordered it to obey my every command, willingly give me its love, and never lie to me. When I relaxed my horn, my test subject, still trying to run, looked at me with fearful green-tinged eyes.

"Stop." With a single word, I froze my servant in place. "Walk toward me." It crawled forward. "Tell me who you are."

"My name is Brass Heart. I am sixty-four years old. My mother, Brass Hoof, is three-hundred, and my father, Mage Heart, is four-hundred. I was born in Canterlot and attended Celestia's school for gifted unicorns for five years before dropping out. I've always had good finesse with my magic, so I tried playing the trombone and got my cutie mark. I play for the Canterlot Orchestra and was planning to play for the wedding of Shining Armor and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza. The day after I got the job, my mother turned into a hideous zombie pony and knocked me out."

So, a spy had decided to use this pony as a key to all the information he could need on the royal wedding. Now to see how much I could make him do. "Jump." It jumped. "Jump higher." it jumped higher. I summoned a glob of wax. "Eat this." He actually ate it. Ok, now for the last test. "Come here and let me drain you."

His love was delicious, but I stopped eating before killing him. I wanted to keep this unicorn as a memento. Who knew? Maybe I could use him later.

A week later, Carapace still hadn't returned. Spinneret was tired of waiting for him, so he decided to just have me provide all of the memories for his experiment with love magic. "The shield in Canterlot was formed by concentrated love, so you should have been able to feel some of its structure as it hit you. I was too far away from the center of the explosion to have received a clear idea of the spell, so I'll cast a simple memory charm to strengthen your recollection of the incident and attempt to copy it myself."

I nodded my approval, and he lit his horn and cast his spell. It wasn't painful, it simply brought me back to the second of my expulsion from Canterlot. I re-experienced everything. I reveled in my victory with Carapace, was then thrown forward by a force on my back, and watched one of my only two friends splatter into shards of chitin and bloody viscera on a marble wall.

Spinneret never cast his spell, he was too busy folding in on himself in horror. I wasn't in much better condition, I couldn't stop screaming, and ended up on my back with my legs thrashing above me. I remained in that state until my patrol-leader ordered me to take my position the next day.


	4. The Revenge of the Deer

It took weeks for me to finally process Carapace's death. It seemed like a sick joke: the strongest warrior I had ever known being killed by the power of _love, _from a _pony _(one of the weakest, stupidest, most useless creatures in this entire reality)! Eventually, though, I registered the lack of Carapace's presence. I spent the days in a mindless stupor, patrolling mechanically and then returning to my sleeping hole to rest. My misery must have been horribly obvious, as even Antenna began to try to cheer me up, forcing me to train with him after our shifts ended.

One day, while I was hovering listlessly through the hive's halls, I was jerked back to attention by an alert from the hivemind. A prisoner had somehow escaped from its cocoon, attacked a drone named Thorax, and made its way through the hive, freeing other prisoners as it went. Antenna and I immediately sped up, combing our route for any sign of hostiles.

The danger of attack made the hive seem far more empty. I could hear the buzz of my brothers checking in and informing others of their findings through the hivemind, but the hive was so large that I rarely saw any of them. I wished that Spinneret was close enough to join up with Antenna and me, but he was on the other side of the hive at this point, and I couldn't abandon my route to meet up with him; all I had was Antenna.

We continued to speed through the tunnels until I caught a familiar scent. It was the unmistakable stench of a deer, but not just any deer. This was the odor of the deer princess that had, along with her brother, tried to enslave the hive. But how had she escaped? And how had she evaded capture? I had crippled her!

I flicked my tongue and followed the doe princess's trail, tracking it through nearby holes until I finally stood on the ceiling with Antenna, hidden behind a stalactite. I could now see how the doe had managed to avoid capture; it was riding on the shoulders of a brutish minotaur. Sitting around the princess was a longma, a young dragon, a bipedal cat, and… A pony. A PONY! A disgusting white pegasus! One of the creatures that had helped murder Carapace, and quite possibly hundreds of other changelings, had escaped! I could barely restrain myself from leaping down at the feathered horse and killing it then and there, but I knew that I needed to be careful. The minotaur, dragon, and cat were all more than twice my size, and the longma was holding a magical crystal. I didn't know if I could take them all at once, even with Antenna by my side. We needed to cocoon them one by one.

I sent the enemy's location through the hivemind, but, as I had expected, the other changelings were too busy dealing with the army of escaped prisoners. At least that would mean I could have this pony all to myself. I wished I had my thrall (Brass Heart, was it?) with me. The horror that would have shown on the mare's face if I had tricked her and revealed what I had done with one of her own kind would have been very satisfying. Instead, I went for a similar approach. I took on the form of my go too pony disguise, Sapphire Scorch, and walked up to the creature farthest from the group.

I gave myself a quiet wheeze when I limped up to the cat, barely out of view of its companions. I whimpered, "Quick! My friends need help! We barely escaped the last patrol, and one of our foals was hurt! Her leg is stuck under a boulder, and we need someone as big as you to help her!"

The cat turned to his friends, but I groaned, "No, there isn't any time! The changelings could come back for the others at any second! You need to come now, or they could be killed!"

The feigned desperation on my face was just enough to convince the cat to follow me. I galloped off, quietly, through a hole that led directly to Antenna, then I burned off my disguise and we cocooned the shrieking feline together.

The dragon and longma were each lured to Antenna with the promise of the gems I would give them if they helped my "poor trapped daughter". Now the only three that remained were the pony, the minotaur, and the princess.

I left Antenna with the cocooned prisoners to ensure that they wouldn't be released a second time and then headed back to face the enemy in my unicorn disguise, letting a pronounced limp into my gait. I settled myself between the princess and minotaur and the pegasus, spent a few seconds "catching my breath" and then begged the pegasus, "Please, my daughter and I barely managed to fend off a changeling patrol, and now her leg is trapped under a boulder! The changelings could be coming for her right now! I need someone as fast as a pegasus to help me save her!"

The white pegasus lifted her wings to take off, just as the princess lifted her cloven hoof and called out, "Stop! Before you follow this unicorn, I must test it." She turned to me, "This will not take long. Your daughter will be safe, but first…"

She took out a small bottle of a green powder, covered her hoof with some of it, and began to paint my face with it. It had only just touched my skin when I hunched over in incredible pain. My disguise fell and I turned and hissed at the pegasus, leaping at her as she screamed. I called Antenna to help me as I chased the pegasus to the ceiling of the cavern. I had almost closed my jaws around one of the vile creature's wings when the minotaur I had forgotten in my rage grabbed me by my left back leg and slammed me into the ground, cracking the chitin over my hip. I screamed in pain and lunged forward, trying to escape. The powder on my face was still preventing me from taking a disguise, so I couldn't heal, and the bull-headed monster behind me was slowly pulling me up to its wrathful master.

I wailed and hissed at the pegasus above me, firing magic blast after magic blast, only for her to dodge each of them. Finally, Antenna charged into the minotaur, his horn lighting his entire body with emerald fire. As the beast's grip loosened, I took to the air, lit my own horn, and slammed the pegasus into the wall before ripping into her neck, shaking and mangling it in my jaws like a rabid dog.

In my mad fury, I didn't notice Antenna facing the princess and her monster. He stayed in the air, blasting the minotaur with fire, making its back uninhabitable to the little doe. She pushed herself off with only a few minor burns and tried to drag herself away, but Antenna glued her to the floor with his wax before she had gotten far. Then he brought down the minotaur by hurling a stalagmite down at it like a massive rock spear, weakening the creature enough for him to cocoon it.

When all of the prisoners had been recaptured, I rejoined Spinneret by our sleeping holes. We learned from the queen herself that the doe had been freed by the traitor, Thorax, who had fled the hive. Any changeling that had information about him was required to submit it to the hivemind immediately. Apparently, he had been a cowardly drone, who hated fighting and sympathized with non-changelings. I hoped that he would be found and executed soon; what kind of monstrous mockery of a changeling would refuse to fight and sympathize with the enemy?

That night, I looked through the hivemind for the changelings who had died in the Canterlot invasion. I was correct in estimating the body count to be in the hundreds. The casualties were great warriors, enchanters, spies, and architects, all worthy members of the hive. How could all of these changelings be dead, while a traitor like Thorax, that loved _creatures _more than his brothers, still lived?


	5. Ancient Memories

Weeks later, I decided to explore the old flutterpony ruins that I had discovered before when I returned from the Canterlot invasion. Spinneret readily joined me, more than willing to explore ancient proto-changeling architecture. After our shifts, we flew to one of the hive's exits and set off. Even the thrill of adventure couldn't completely hide the absence of Carapace. We remained somber on our journey, despite our many attempts to break the dour mood. We started to approach the ancient ruins shortly, the triangular buildings glowing pale, sun-bleached white in the grey, rocky sand. The old hive's carvings indicated that this area had once been a beautiful valley before the sunstone had shattered. What had this place been like when it was still green and filled with flowers? What had the first changelings done after their transformation? How had the deer gotten access to the corrupted sunstone? And what had become of Draconovespa, the first changeling queen?

Spinneret and I decided to check the sleeping quarters first. I was advancing quickly in the field of mind magic: if I could find some personal items belonging to a flutterpony or ancient changeling, I could possibly see some of its memories.

I hovered over the massive coliseum the flutterponies had slept in, searching for an entrance. All that could be seen of the building was its ceiling. I landed in front of a loose stone and lifted it in my magic, letting Spinneret fly down before crawling in myself. I looked down at the quarters from my perch on the ceiling, viewing a massive open area surrounded by ten stories of orderly rooms. We checked the rooms one by one, searching for any intact trinket. I found one on my tenth room. I crawled into a cubicle with the remains of soft bedding, wooden shelves, and ancient books. One of those books was in the center of the room, so it was probably well-loved. I sat on the still-soft floor and lifted the book in my magic, searching for any faint memories. With a sharp effort, I was in the head of a flutterpony.

_I was too afraid to leave my bedroom. The witches were on the attack, and the ponies weren't coming to help. It wasn't fair! When they had needed provisions on the way to find a new land after their homes were destroyed by ice and snow, we had fed them, given them a warm place to sleep in, and guided each tribe to a nearby paradise! Why wouldn't they help when we needed them! The witches had been stealing flutterponies, probably to do horrible things to them, for almost a year! Someone needed to stop them!_

_When I finally flew out into the city, the shadow of my clear wings dark on the ground, I passed a group of flutterponies listening to Swift Breeze's speeches. He saw me as I flew past and called out, "Princess Rose Leaf! Is the queen finally willing to march against the mountain witches? Rose Leaf!" _

_I left the warmonger screaming with his followers. None of them understood how impossible it would be to fight. The witches' magic was too powerful for us to defeat with the sunstone as weak as it was. Even Rosedust herself couldn't undo whatever spell the horrible creatures had used to sap its energy. The valley was starting to dry up without the stone's power. _

_The next day, to my horror, my mother, the queen, stood before the sunstone's altar and spoke, "The witches of the mountain have stolen our friends, they have attacked our sacred stone, they have threatened our community's very existence! The ponies are never coming to help us, it is time to fly to war!"_

_I flew to the witches' mountain, keeping my eyes on the ground. We didn't stand a chance. How many of the ponies around me would be dead before tomorrow? The black, smoking mountain was coming into view, along with the three witches that claimed it as their home, waiting for us. Maybe I could run away, maybe I could reach my mother and convince her to stop this! Before I could put any of my plans into action, however, I felt the witches' curse pass over me. I screamed in pain as my muscles spasmed. The pain, it wasn't fading! My body, it was on fire; I was burning alive!_

_Queen Rosebud led the army to the sunstone, all of us writhing in pain and terror. Soon we reached the sacred stone and begged for its power to save us. We reached out and pulled as much power as we could into ourselves to stop the pain, and it worked. The pain dissipated, but then I cried out in horror as the stone began to crack. Its color leached away, and it shattered into thousands of pieces. Then I screamed as an emerald fire consumed my body._

_When I woke, the first thing that I felt was a horrible, gnawing hunger. I looked down to see black, hole filled legs, a green shell, and a hideous, tattered, blue mane and tail. _

I shuddered as I left my vision. Had that been Chrysalis? She had been so young and afraid, but still intelligent and cunning. I flew out of the Coliseum with Spinneret, happily listening to his speeches on architecture.

There were many other ruins to search through. We chose a hospital. The entrance room was large and spacious and filled with spilled herbs and the corpses of plants and animals. I split off from Spinneret and slipped into one of the hospital rooms. The spongy bed had bits of translucent blue hair still stuck in its cracks. I reached out and held a strand in my hoof, and entered the past.

_Dying. Everything was dying! The flowers and grasses and streams were all drying up to nothing. Even my own body was dying. My skin had turned to hard chitin, my beautiful eyes slitted and vengeful, my wings to tattered messes, my hair to cobwebs, my teeth to jagged fangs, my antenna to a dead, warped spear, my back to a horrid shell, and my legs to monstrous pitted things. A pain in my stomach was slowly devouring me. I knew that it would kill me, eventually. I would have my vengeance, first. What else was left to me?_

_The healers strained to hold me down, broken, buglike things. I was taller than them now, if only by a head, but they could still keep me on my bed with their tattered hooves. They gave me a squirrel to calm me, but when I looked at it, I didn't see a source of comfort, I opened my mouth and let out my new gigantic tongue. That taste… Where was it coming from?! I lit my new horn and tugged, and a stream of pink energy flowed out of the animal and down my throat. It was like nothing I had ever tasted: delicious, with the flavor of my mother's embrace. Before I knew it, the squirrel was dead, and the pain in my stomach had been soothed._

_After that first squirrel, I drank the love of animal after animal. I knew that I should have pitied them, but their deaths gave me the life force that I needed to claim my revenge! As I recovered from my transformation, I practiced with my new magic. I lifted the bodies of my meals, occasionally eating them to take the protein that my healers insisted that I needed. I summoned fire and force with my hatred. Soon, I was well enough to rise and stumble up to my mother. She looked even more monstrous than me, with a similar form that included her antenna, pink eyes, wings, and hair of a shade that matched the eyes and shells of the other corrupted flutterponies, a knife-like horn, and dragonfly wings. I lowered my head onto her shoulder, but I did not cry as I once would have, at least I had gained some strength along with all of my hideous features._

_Within days, we were ready to bring down the witches. Our new magic was strong enough to counter theirs, it had to be. We would force them to change us back. Our new army charged up to the smoke-spewing mountain, screeching through the air like a plague of locusts. When we finally reached the dreaded peak, the witches were hiding in a system of tunnels below its surface. The corridors and rooms were decorated in a medieval style, complete with tapestries, suits of armor, crumbling paintings, and torches. We stormed through every hidden piece of the wretched place until we found them, hiding behind a tapestry of a strangely dragon-like creature with the head of a grey pony. We ripped them out and demanded our true forms from them, but they insisted that they did not have the power to make us whole again. I could feel my hatred join with the rage of my subjects, and, while my mother screamed in fury, I gave them silent permission to tear their tormentors to shreds. They swarmed over the hags' bodies and devoured what little love they possessed, before ravaging their physical forms. In seconds, there was nothing left but a crimson stain on the silk carpet below our holed hooves._

Spinneret spoke proudly of the medicines he had found, bragging about our ancestors' healing prowess. I told him of what I had discovered, though I never spoke of the story's narrator. Our queen had grown quickly, she had only needed to take her proper form to mature into a brilliant and powerful changeling. I couldn't wait to discover more of our race's past!

Soon, we came across the tunnel to the old hive. It didn't look as imposing as it had before, now that I knew what it was. We climbed down into the familiar twisting tunnels, Spinneret heading off to find how similar the system really was to our hive, while I flew to the queen's old bedroom.

Chrysalis's old room was carved with hundreds of murals of ancient conquests. Well, ancient to me. She had probably fought in every one of these invasions. In the center of her room, a bed of spongy material similar to the substance I had found in the ruins stood. At its foot lay a small figurine of a flutterpony. I picked it up and entered the memories it held.

_How could my mother have done something so stupid? That deer friend of hers had never truly cared about her, how could he? No non-changeling could feel anything so complex as care. Now he had gone off with a fragment of the sunstone, probably to attempt to undo my race's magnificent transformation! How could it ever understand how wonderful it was to be a changeling? To have the power of every creature in all the world, and never fear the rotting touch of death? Luckily, his efforts were useless. Before I had learned the glory of my new power, I had helped my mother try to undo the change thousands of times before. No matter how real and permanent it seemed, the sunstone would always return the changelings to their true forms. All attempts to destroy the stone's pieces had failed as well. I would laugh when that stag returned to the hive a failure._

I was glad that the memories were becoming shorter. I didn't have the energy to delve into many more of them. Soon it would be time to return to the hive and rest for tomorrow's patrols. I trotted farther down into the hive, too exhausted to fly, until I finally reached the sunstone altar.

I had chosen my last location well. I could feel the queen's energy around this spot, a raging storm of bitterness tinged with grief. I sat down before a potent area, far enough away from the sunstone that it didn't drain my love, and entered the night's final memory.

_She was gone. That animal had killed her. My mother, the great queen of blood, ravager of a thousand cities, the bane of love, the goddess of the changelings, now sat encased in crystal below the foul forests of the deer. I didn't have the strength to reclaim her body. The changelings that had escaped with me were pitifully few, and I had spent the last of my stored love in assassinating the stag that had slain her. Now I needed to rebuild my kingdom. I didn't dare touch the sunstone without thousands of drones to bear its love draining effects together, but I could take a single piece. Perhaps, if worked correctly, it could be used to drain more than love. I needed some way to keep my little brothers and children safe while I replenished their numbers. Hopefully, I would never visit this cursed place again._

So in the end, the great queen Draconovespa had been felled by her heart's weakness. She had let it control her, and it had been her undoing. It was sad, but at least her daughter had become a better queen than she had been.


	6. The Second Strike

The queen would give us vengeance. She was planning another invasion of the pony lands at that very moment! Spinneret and I chittered to each other in joy. Chrysalis would replace all of the important, beloved ponies in Equestria with infiltrators, collecting love and prisoners for all of us to feed on for generations! I made a pact with Spinneret: the ponies we fed on would feel the pain as we bled them dry; they would never pay enough for what they had done to Carapace.

Days later, every changeling in the hive cheered as our spies replaced their targets one by one. Soon love and prisoners would flood the hive! Antenna couldn't help but feel the excitement, as he acted uncharacteristically happy on our patrols. Sometimes I even caught him smiling on the job! He could never hold back a, "How much love do you think we'll be allowed to eat when the first spies return?" or a, "So what will you do with your new thralls?"

I spent my nights training Brass Heart, who I kept in a hidden chamber in my sleeping hole so no one could try to steal him. He was so entertaining and obedient that I couldn't bring myself to hurt him the way I had planned. Hopefully, some rebellious prisoner would arrive for me to torment. I practiced searching his mind for information on pony customs, I could have taken it from the hivemind, but it was more fun to do it this way. I feasted on his love when I was hungry, and occasionally gave him treats in return. When I practiced transfiguring objects into animals, I shared their meat with him. It turned out that ponies could eat animal products if they had to, and, since I had cooked it well, could even like it. Of course, he was horrified by the idea at first. He acted like I was trying to make him commit cannibalism. I hadn't known that the ponies had such a strong alliance with the cows.

I learned about the pony magic school, Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, and how he had failed out, not because of lack of effort, but because he simply didn't have the magic or willpower necessary to perform the spellwork required of a graduating student. I took a sip of his love. Maybe when I tried to learn all of the useful enchantments bouncing around in his head, I could help him with that.

I was patrolling with Antenna when I heard the alarm. There was _another _group of intruders in the hive. A blue unicorn, a purple unicorn, and a chaos spirit named Discord. Spirits and unicorns were useless without their magic, so this would be easy. Still, I needed to stay on guard. One could never tell when the next deer prince could attack.

Soon after, a patrol reported that it had captured the chaos spirit, then the blue pony, and then that the last two intruders were heading towards the throne room. Who was the second remaining intruder? I didn't have time to find out, they were nearing the queen! I joined a swarm racing to the throne room, ready to rip the enemy to bloody chunks of gore.

I arrived just in time to answer the queen's call to swarm the pink unicorn. She didn't even try to fight back as we stuck her legs to the ground with our wax. I could see Antenna and Spinneret around me, proud of our accomplishment. We listened to another glorious speech from Queen Chrysalis, reminding us of how much love we would soon have to feed on. Then the disgusting unicorn dared to interject, claiming that _sharing _love would keep us all full. How ridiculous! Sharing food with everyone in the hive would only leave the sharer with less, or, if it was lucky, the same amount of love it had contained before.

After the unicorn's horrible idea was revealed, the queen seemed to notice something. She looked into its eyes, and blasted it, lifting its disguise. So this was Thorax! I hissed in disgust. The abomination was trying to steal our love harvest! I could hardly believe my own eyes, a changeling wanted to destroy everything its brothers had worked for!

The queen scolded the traitor once again and began to drain his love. If he wanted to ruin the harvest for all of us, he didn't deserve to keep any love for himself. I watched gleefully as the pitiful monster got what he deserved, until the purple unicorn that the queen had caught attacking the throne called out to him, and then the drone exploded into a flash of love energy, blowing the queen back into her throne and forming a cocoon around himself. I covered my eyes, and when I reopened them, the traitor was no longer a drone.

He was hideous! As tall as the queen, but with purple eyes, two giant orange horns, no fangs, a purple shell over his wings, and a long chitin-membrane tail. His chitin was the color of vomit, and, without its fangs, his face looked like that of an eldritch abomination. Still, I could smell the love wafting off of him. Maybe this was a good idea? It probably wasn't a permanent transformation, and the massive boost in love energy could be useful in combat. I could see other changelings trying it already. Now we could use the unicorn's own idea against it! I could only imagine the horrible things I could do to it with unlimited energy! I focused on Chrysalis, on how much I loved and respected her. She was my mother, my queen, and had been the savior of the changeling race. She had protected us for thousands of years, the least I could do was give her what little love I possessed. My body lifted into the air, love pouring out from it toward the queen. I could feel a pink cocoon form around me… And then I was on the ground, and thankfully not as ugly as Thorax. My chitin was blue now, and I had a large dark blue shell on my back with a sharp ridge in its middle, purple eyes, and a second edge on my horn. I no longer had a tail, a mane, or fangs. I looked awful, but I could sense the sea of love inside me! Now, to use it to kill the pony-no. NO! The queen! What had happened to the queen! She was gone, and the throne room had been destroyed! Had we done this? All of the prisoners were escaping, and Thorax was claiming to be the new king!

I couldn't seem suspicious. I knew how to disguise my feelings, so I continued to do so as everyone followed Thorax into the air and to a strange village. Or at least I attempted to. My wings! They were gone! Where the overgrown shells of other changelings had merely hidden their wings, mine had completely consumed them! Antenna picked me up and carried me to the celebration. His transformation had been _much _kinder to him than my own. He had autumn green chitin, a thin, rosy, winglike tail, a red shell and eyes, and a horn with several ridges on its back. He seemed terribly happy with the change, unable to stop saying ridiculous things like, "Isn't this amazing? I haven't had this much love in my entire life!"

Something had happened to the others. They were all acting strangely. None of them seemed to care about Chrysalis, or how horrible we all looked, or that the _traitor _wanted to be _king_, and to forbid us from raiding ever again! What else would we _do? _Raiding was what we were! Still, they all glutted themselves on pony food and danced with their enemies. I eventually found Spinneret, who looked awful. His chitin was yellow, and his eyes were orange. His shell had split in two and remained the same yellow as the rest of him, and his belly had turned orange. The thing that nearly made me vomit, though, was his horn; it was tiny! My friend's beautiful horn was now barely more than a stub! How could he use magic at all with that crippled thing! Luckily, he seemed just as uncomfortable with recent events as I did. We stayed together for the rest of the party, barely able to hide our disgust and hatred from the ponies.

That night, all of the prisoners were freed. All of the food sources that changelings had spent thousands of years collecting and preserving, gone in a single night. After they had all been escorted out of the hive, I remembered the one prisoner I had kept in my sleeping hole. I considered letting him go, but what would the point be? When the hive came back to its senses, he would be valuable. I needed to find some way of undoing this change, it had done something horrible to the other drones' minds. I tried to look for a cure in the hivemind, only to find nothing. The great reservoir of information had gone completely dry! Then I realized why. It wasn't Chrysalis's hivemind anymore, it was Thorax's. That was what was wrong with the others, they were under his influence. What did that mean for me?

I cried myself to sleep that night, and I'm sure that other changelings did the same. My wings were gone, and, if Thorax had his way, the hive would never stage an invasion again. Fighting was my purpose, I was a warrior! What would I do if there was no need for warriors? I could hear Spinneret sobbing below me, trying and failing to levitate simple rocks for more than a second. He had been an architect, now he couldn't summon wax. What would we do with our lives?


	7. The Queen is Gone, Long Live the King

Thorax called us all together the next morning, in the ruins of the throne room. I almost broke down screaming when I saw what had become of it. The throne had completely shattered. The ceiling and walls were gone, leaving the entire area open to the harsh sunlight. The cocoons had all been removed, killing the area's usual soft green light. Worst of all, Thorax had built a throne made from a living tree for himself where the queen's beautiful rock throne had once stood. He stood up before us, his hideous wings at his back, and asked, "So, what do you guys want to do?"

Fight! I wanted to fight! I wanted to go down to the training room and spar with Carapace: a practice you declared unsafe, with a friend that died and will go unavenged because of your cowardice! I didn't dare say any of that aloud, of course, but my glare probably sent that kind of message. When no one replied, Thorax decided, "Let's do some arts and crafts!"

He brought out large strips of paper, paint brushes, and paints, and then told us to create whatever we wanted. I tried to paint a victorious warrior standing before his prisoners, but it looked more like a black blob in front of a mess of green and pastel colors. Still, Thorax seemed to be able to tell what it was. He groaned, snatched it away, and gave me a new bit of paper, sheepishly muttering, "Maybe you could paint something a little less, evil?"

I spent the rest of the day painting something, as Thorax put it, less evil. I painted my first mother. It wasn't even close to a correct likeness, both because I was an awful artist and because I could barely remember her face after all of these years, but it was enough to remind me of her. It had her black hair, her brown eyes, and her pale skin. The hardest part to remember was the nose. Human noses seemed so strange now, like nothing else in the world. Thorax congratulated me on my piece, calling it "abstract art".

When I went to sleep that night, I listened to Spinneret's snores for a short while. They were much higher than they had been before, and I pondered until I snapped up, recognizing the change. Spinneret was a girl. All drones were supposed to be genderless, and we called each other by male pronouns as a sign of respect to the queen, but we weren't normal drones anymore. Now that I thought about it, my voice was a bit higher now, too. I looked down. Oh… Well, I'd been female before, and it didn't really matter now anyway. Soon I would be a drone again. Chrysalis would come back for us, and Thorax, with his stupid _peaceful _ideas, would fall.

That night I dreamed I was flying over a raging sea, trying to reach the queen. She thought that we had abandoned her, I needed to tell her that we were still worth fighting for, that some of us were still loyal to her, but something was wrong with my wings. I turned around to check on them and watched them crumble away to nothing. Then I fell into the water. I tried to swim back to the surface, but something was in my way, dragging me down with it.

When I woke up, Thorax decided that it was a good day for music. He brought us sheets of pony melodies and told us to sing. I was okay, but my voice was too low for the female parts and too high for the male parts and constantly cracked. The songs had stupid lyrics, too. They were all about things like smiling and friendship and were written in words so simple that they seemed to be meant for children.

Thorax saw that most of us were tired of singing, and decided to do something else. He said that we didn't need to sleep in holes anymore. Now we had hundreds of thousands of extra rooms that had once been used for things like crafting armor and weapons, sparring, and storing prisoners, that we no longer needed. He told us to go off and find new sleeping quarters.

Spinneret chose an old forging room. She liked the heat of the furnace. I took a training room and teleported Brass Heart into it. It was an incredibly short teleport, but it still left me exhausted. It would be worth it later. Since no other changelings wanted to spar anymore, I would have to use him as my partner. Spinneret could barely cast magic, so a fight against her just wouldn't be fair. Maybe I could snap Antenna out of his love-weakness, but if I failed, he would tell Thorax, so it was far safer to use a creature that couldn't betray me.

As the days passed I tried and failed to find any talent in craft after craft. There wasn't much else to do now, but I was horrible at painting, terrible at singing, even worse at sculpting, and hilariously bad at theater acting (the parts were just too ridiculous for me to take seriously)! I wallowed in my boredom until I finally found something that I was competent at. Antenna and another changeling named Coxa wanted a script for them to act out one day, so I wrote one. It was the tragic tale of a nymph who left the hive and lost his way, and his journey home through forests filled with monsters, cities of hostile creatures, and deserts devoid of life. It told of how he conquered all adversity with his cunning and battle prowess, only to return home to find that his hive had been conquered by a new love-sharing monarch. It was supposed to be tragic, but I didn't contradict Antenna when he told me how much he loved the happy ending.

Plants were starting to grow in the badlands. There had only been a few hints of green in the beginning, but soon, a thick carpet of verdant life had covered everything. I was sitting in my quarters, glowering at the soft moss that had slowly crept under my sleeping body, when I received a command from the hivemind. Thorax's voice tremulously called every changeling to follow him to the castle of Princess Twilight Sparkle. By the queen, that was a stupid name! I sighed and galloped over to Spinneret. I was so slow without my wings! By the time I had reached the yellow bug, most of the changelings who could still fly were already gone.

Spinneret told me how her experiments with the arts had turned out. She was a decent sculptor but found crafting statues horribly boring. Thorax had ordered all the architects to start making their hallways simple and easy to navigate, so even if she could learn to spray wax with her tiny horn, she wouldn't be allowed to do anything worthwhile.

When we finally arrived at the pony princess's crystal tree-palace, we lurked in after the others. Most of the walls were blue, purple, or pink, and the corridors were relatively facile. I saw all manners of delicious-looking ponies but knew that I would no longer be able to drain them. Spinneret went off to try and talk to some of the ponies, while I refused to speak a word to any of them on principle. Looking around, I found hundreds of changelings interacting with the filthy animals, even laughing with them. Some of them actually praised their destroyers, "Thank you for saving us! No one's ever stood up to Chrysalis before!" They were heartless, back-stabbing traitors, all of them! Even Spinneret couldn't fight off Thorax's wicked influence. Would I be the only changeling cheering for the queen when she finally returned?

When the ceremony began, I was seething with rage. The vile animals that had destroyed everything the changeling race stood for were standing on a stage, having medals of honor bestowed upon them! I was a freak because of them! My queen was gone because of them! My friend was dead because of _creatures_ like them! Yet I was not brave enough to light my horn and stand against them.

Antenna carried me back to the hive. He seemed all too happy with his new life. "I love painting and singing, and every other craft too! My favorite's dancing, but singing is a close second. You should join the choir I'm starting, it'll be great!"

Antenna had been a coward in the beginning, but he had gotten so much better. Now Thorax had made him a spineless craven again. How could a warrior forget how wonderful the thrill of battle was, just like that?

I let Brass Heart out to spar with that night, after blocking off the entrance to my chamber. I lit my horn and charged at him, but without my wings, the impact had no more force than a simple tackle. Then I tried to bite him, but my flat teeth didn't even leave a scratch. I eventually got angry enough to slam him into the side of my room, throwing blast after blast into his feeble energy shield until it cracked open. After I was finished pounding the wretch, I re-cocooned him and cried. Even my magic had been defiled; it had decayed from a beautiful green to a putrid bright-blue.

The changelings that had replaced the Equestrian leaders in the second Equestrian invasion returned to the hive the next evening. Within a few days, Thorax had forced them to transform into freaks like the rest of us. The only changeling who had refused to give up his true form was Pharynx. Somehow Thorax was related to that perfect example of changeling superiority. The queen's general was a breath of fresh air whenever I saw him in the hive's foliated corridors: ripping down vines, teaching grubs how to growl and hiss, and threatening any changeling stupid enough to cross his path. The red-maned, purple-eyed changeling was the last beacon of hope for our dignity.

Soon the pinkish-purple unicorn had come again to make my new life even worse, right as a maulwurf was being drawn to the hive by all of the new plant life (I had _known _letting all of this foliage grow around the badlands was an awful idea). Pharynx had bagged her and her weak blue friend. His only mistake had been bringing them to Thorax. The neon green worm was too weak to deal with the intruders properly, and simply let them wander the hive freely.

I stalked the two invaders as they traipsed around my home since no one else would. They wanted to convert Pharynx to help prop up Thorax's weak reign! They had no idea how strong the general was. I watched him refuse their pathetic attempts to relate to him and returned to writing my next script after they gave up on trying to change him.

I was writing "The Tale of the Drone and the Manticore" on my typewriter, when I heard the pinkish-purple pony cry out, "Pharynx is gone!" I leaped up and cried out, "YES!" He had gotten away! He was safe! "And the maulwarf is coming!" "WHAT!" Almost none of us could fight off a _pony_ now, nevermind a gigantic mole monster! Even I could barely stop a unicorn musician! I… I was worthless…

I ducked out of sight behind a crowd of changelings and hid when Thorax called for volunteers to fight the maulwurf, and stayed down while the pinkish unicorn gave a speech on how we "had a choice now, and should stand with the changeling who gave it to us". Predictably, no changeling chose to fight. After the crowd had dispersed, I galloped back to my room and hid.

I had called Antenna a coward, but I was even more useless than he was! Thorax and "sharing love" had taken everything from me! He had taken my wings, he had taken my power, he had taken my dignity! If I couldn't fight, what was the point of me?

I stayed in my room until I heard a great buzzing outside. I crept past the hive's rocky floor and peered out to see a massive swarm gathering to fight the maulwurf. Squadrons of winged changelings shimmered in the sun, and ranks of wingless changelings like me marched across the ground. I could see Spinneret and even Antenna among the rainbow of changelings in the sky. If even Antenna was willing to fight, then I would never be able to look any changeling in the eyes again if I waited and hid. I bit my lip, whimpered, and galloped up to follow the horde.

As I marched, I went over what I knew about maulwurfs. Their hides were resistant to magic, their claws were incredibly sharp, and they were colossal. The creature started to come into view underneath a sheer ledge. Soon I could make out Pharynx's dark form, and, was that Thorax? The king of cowards was actually willing to fight? Well, even if he was assisting his brother, he was far too weak to make any difference. Spinneret, Antenna, and the other airborne changelings harassed the creature from around its head and the grounded changelings and I rammed horn-first into its legs. None of our efforts did the slightest bit of damage until Pharynx tricked it into swinging its limbs wildly enough to hit itself. Finally, Pharynx bravely landed on the monster's arm and leapt out of the way just before it snapped down, crunching its own wrist in its jaws. The maulwarf screamed and fled, leaving the hive safe, for the moment.

After the fight, Thorax did the most despicable thing I had ever seen. He tricked his brother into professing his love for the hive, transforming him into a hideous purple beetle like the rest of us. The last true changeling was no more.


	8. A Cure for Friendship

It was time to face the truth. The queen was never coming back. Why should she? There were no loyal changelings left in the hive. The swarm I knew was dead, and I couldn't stand to sit idly by and watch Thorax defile its corpse anymore.

Leaving the vegetation-ridden shell of a hive with Brass Heart's cocoon was easy-Thorax hadn't bothered to post any guards. I ran through the trees as quickly as I could, hoping that the darkness of night and cover of foliage would shield me from the eyes of any bastardized changelings in the area. I knew where I would go. Spinneret would know where to find me if she ever decided that the hive wasn't worth living in. I burned through the undergrowth in disgust, destroying as much of it as possible until I reached my destination. The huge entrance to Draconovespa's abandoned hive had been well hidden by the new growth, but I recognized the cliffs behind it. Climbing down into the bowels of the old hive felt like going home. It was beautiful, exactly like my hive had been before Thorax had ruined it. I followed the inverted patterns of the corridors to the sleeping hole I had used when I was a real changeling and climbed into it, finding a deep, wonderful sleep far more easily than I had in months.

When I first stirred that morning, I reached out for Brass Heart's cocoon and attempted to devour some of his love. I woke up when I failed to feel the delicious trickle of affection flowing down my throat. I shook myself awake, crawled to the ground, and galloped off to Draconovespa's chambers, hoping, despite my despair, to find some way to become a real changeling again.

Finding Draconovespa's throne room was easy: it was in the same area as Queen Chrysalis's. The real problem was getting there without wings. There were hundreds of areas where walls ended randomly, and each of these took hours to climb past. It would have been easy to get around these obstacles if the broken sunstone wasn't inside the hive. It was an extremely powerful love void, and my new form was far more vulnerable to being drained than my previous one, making the use of magic almost impossible. Transforming into a bat for ten seconds cost me more love than I could receive from a pony if I drained it dry, and since there were no other metamorphosed changelings around, I couldn't get any love from sharing with them. For the first time in months, I was hungry. After seeing what being full could do to a changeling, I welcomed the hunger into my belly like an old friend.

I didn't know how long I had been climbing by the time I had finally reached the broken sunstone. I did know that my body had begun to revert to its true form. After days and weeks of love deprivation, the toxic overflow of affection had finally started dissipating. I noticed the sharpening of my flattened teeth and wept with joy, knowing that no matter how slow the transformation was, I would be a changeling again! It took me longer than I like to admit to climb back to my hooves and continue with my journey. My teeth, legs, horn, and back were constantly aching, warping back into their proper shape. Maybe by the time I reached my sleeping hole, I would be my old self again! Hopefully, my discoveries in the throne room would be as valuable as the discovery I had made on my journey to it.

Inside of the ancient queen's throne room, I discovered a great seat made of obsidian, with a back carved into the shape of massive dragonfly wings. Its bottom was stuffed with now decaying soft material, and one of its arms had a small compartment. I opened the compartment and carefully lifted a journal from it with my slowly blackening horn. My aura was already starting to show streaks of green! I opened the diary and flipped through its entries, searching through far more pages than the modest book should have been able to contain. Eventually, I turned to the last paragraph.

_My daughter trusts no one. I pity her. She has been trapped in her hideous form for so many years that her time as a flutterpony has become less than a single percentage point of her life. Sometimes I fear that she wants my efforts to fail, that she wants to be a changeling forever. After Renly cures her, she will see how wonderful being a flutterpony is. After he has destroyed the sunstone, the power of love will restore our true selves._

Renly, that must have been the name of Draconovespa's stag friend. She had probably died only a few days after writing this. That was what the magic of friendship got you, a swift end. That wasn't important, though, the _stone _was important. I had seen it in one of Chrysalis's memories, but I'd forgotten! How could I be so _stupid!?_ I could have saved Spinneret and Antenna the day that Thorax usurped the throne! First, I would test the stone on myself, then, if it worked, I would come for Spinneret.

My great hump of a shell was shrinking, and the buds of wings were growing on top of it. Tiny fangs were forming in my mouth as well. Shallow pits were carving their way into my legs. I felt sharp jolts of pain every time I moved, but I only felt relief every time I noticed them. Even if the sunstone couldn't change me back, I would become myself again in a matter of days. I vibrated my minuscule wings in anticipation; soon I would fly, and I would fight! Even if I had to hunt on my own.

The sunstone wasn't much farther below-I reached the altar before the day had ended. The second I hopped down from the ceiling, I could feel the broken stone's power. I dizzily limped up on mismatched legs and fell to my stomach before it. I now knew what Antenna must have felt when the stag prince had ripped the love out of him: a chilling appendage reaching deep into the core and forcing every last drop of magic out. I held on to a tiny scrap of energy, pulled myself away before I could pass out, and raced up to Brass Heart on my newly regrown wings.

I hadn't been this hungry since the days before the Canterlot invasion! I drained all the love I could from Brass Heart without killing him and then transfigured some of the nearby rock into a looking glass to inspect my reflection. I was a true changeling again, exactly as I had been before, with my rounded holes and long fangs, but with one difference. My eyes, wings, and shell were all the purple of my bastardized form's eyes and highlights.

After sleeping for some amount of time, I woke up groggily and peered into the patch of glass on the floor. The residual purple seemed to have no effect on me other than providing proof of my shame. My one moment of disloyalty would never be forgotten. I had to make things right. I needed to fix the rest of the hive if I ever wanted to kill the usurper, find Chrysalis, and return the swarm to its former glory. First, I needed to refill my love reserves with Brass Heart's energy, but soon I would be strong enough to go out and find Spinneret. It would be strange, seeing his true form with orange eyes.

I trained with Brass Heart for a week, getting used to dropping death from the air, blasting fire, biting, and other bits of my old fighting style. They came to me like my last training session had been only days in the past instead of nearly a year ago. I took one last drink from my thrall when I knew I was ready and decided to set out for the hive the next morning.

I spent my return to the hive disguised as my corrupted self. As I had hoped, no one had even noticed that I had left. No one but Spinneret. I found her in her room, mindlessly shaping a sculpture of the hive as it was before Thorax had usurped the throne. She had clearly gained more finesse with her stub of a horn and would be even more skillful when she had her old horn back.

She gasped and lost control of her telekinesis when she saw me, letting her clay creation plop onto her desk. "W-where were you? Stinger, you've been gone for months!"

I dropped my disguise and replied, "I've been in the abandoned hive. Spinneret, I've found a way to change all of us back! Do you remember the stone we found near the bottom of that hive? It drains love, and when a corrupted changeling runs out of love…"

Spinneret willingly followed me back to the old hive, but he seemed nervous. He never stopped looking back as we galloped into the trees. When I had finally led him through the tunnels of the ancient structure, he stared at the broken sunstone in terror. "Don't you want to be yourself again?"

"I-I do, but the hunger… While I'm like this, I'm full. I don't want to be starving again!"

Spinneret was merely scared, like a child running from its flu shot. Even I had been afraid in my corrupted form when the situation turned threatening. He would be fine once the process was finished. When the yellow changeling turned to flee, I pushed her back with my magic, forcing her into the broken stone's radius. She crumpled in on herself, and green flames burst out around her. I watched the monstrous yellow body blister and crumble, parts burning, lengthening, and sharpening, until my oldest living friend lay before me, exactly as I remembered him, with only a set of orange eyes, wings, and shell to mark that he had ever been any different.

I carried Spinneret to Brass Heart's cocoon and helped him drink the stallion's love. When he woke, the first thing he noticed was his hunger, something he hadn't felt in almost a year. He immediately attempted to share his love with me, but the process failed miserably. The unlimited beam of love simply refused to materialize and burst out of his chest. It appeared that changelings could develop resistance to friendship transformations.

Leaving Spinneret on a lovingly transfigured bed of spongy wax with Brass Heart's cocoon, I set off toward the pony lands to capture a few more prisoners. I took on my corrupted changeling disguise, climbed out of the newly occupied hive, and raced through the horribly colorful badlands. The shift from the changeling kingdom to Equestrian lands could barely be noticed, as both areas were the same ugly shade of tree green.

Once I was a few miles into Equestrian territory, I took on my Sapphire Scorch disguise. I was quickly able to find a dirt road leading through a bright wood filled with pale, red-leaved maple trees. I rejoiced as I realized that I could study the area through the queen's hivemind again. This place was called the Fire-Woods, named for the fire-red color the trees would turn in the autumn and the flame-producing salamanders that lived in them, burning the undergrowth every summer. I passed one or two of these orange lizards as I cantered down the dry, brown path, wondering if I could bring a few of them back to my new home to provide bits of extra love when I caught sight of a chestnut earth pony pulling a wagon overflowing with pears.

The earth pony mare turned to me, snorted, and asked, "What's a fancy looking unicorn like you doing out in Fire-Woods? You ought to be up in Canterlot studying at Celestia's school if that spell-fire cutie mark has anything to say about it."

Canterlot would be a great place to explore next; there were so many ponies living there that no one would notice if a few went missing, the proximity to Equestria's monarchs could provide good access to information, and the school of magic would be a great place for me to learn to use the ponies' advanced knowledge of wizardry against them. Chrysalis would be proud to see me rebuilding the hive's spy network and food supply, but for now, there weren't enough true changelings to do anything that complicated. I would have to settle for capturing a single pony for now. "There are some ruins nearby with powerful magical artifacts, they're supposed to have a special effect on fruits: they make them grow seeds that become gigantic trees that produce the most delicious fruits ever tasted! I could show you the way, the closest ruins aren't far from here, and I'd love to have someone to prove that the stories are true."

As expected, my story hooked the mare's attention. She grinned, reared up in joy, and galloped after me all the way through the woods. When we came to the hive's entrance, I told her that there was an artifact just at the bottom of the tunnel, and offered to levitate her down. She picked up one of her pears and let me lift her in my telekinesis and set her on the ancient hive's floor. Once she had been safely deposited in her new prison, I dropped my disguise, rushed down at her, and cocooned her before she had a chance to scream.

Spinneret mumbled happily in his sleep when I set another source of love next to him. I had no idea how long I had spent recovering, but I imagined that Spinneret would take more time, as he had lost all of his energy at once. I watched him grin, wrap his front legs around the farmer's cocoon, and suck out a mouthful of love. I hadn't seen him smile like this in months.

After lowering the wagon of pears down into the underground hive and preserving them in wax, I flew back out to the forest and retook my pony disguise. I would need far more than two cocooned ponies if I hoped to house a swarm of cured changelings in the ancient hive. One pony per changeling seemed like it would work, but it would be more comfortable to keep a five to one ratio of ponies to drones. I had usually fed once per day before Thorax's coup, and a pony could usually handle two or three regular feedings per day, but changelings recovering from the consequences of love sharing seemed to need a certain amount of love before they regained consciousness. Besides, I didn't have much to do other than hunting, as I wanted Spinneret to be ready to help me when I brought other changelings back. If even he resisted, I anticipated needing to drag other corrupted drones to the sunstone thrashing and wailing.

I captured six more farmers traveling through the trees with the same strategy that I had used against my first victim, but the wood eventually ran out of ponies. I took the form of a hawk and began to circle the nearby area, searching for any more targets to capture. The woods were just as empty as I had suspected, so I flew farther out from the forest; I noticed a small settlement of earth ponies only a few miles away. Before I left Fire-Woods, I shapeshifted into a chimera and left tracks and burned foliage for any ponies who came searching for their neighbors.

The earth pony village was tiny. The entire settlement was made of only twenty-five houses and a small town square, where ponies lived in small apartments above their shops. It was obvious that my unicorn disguise would be out of place in this town, so I decided to go for something more common. I took the form of a tiny, coal-black, earth pony filly.

I stumbled up to a handful of ponies in the outskirts of the village and sat down, gasping for breath. "My big sister and I were hauling our apples through Fire-Woods, and a giant Chimera attacked us! Will anyone come with me and help her?"

To my surprise, the few ponies that I had meant to lure back to the hive ran through the town, recruiting almost all of its residents. This would be harder than I had expected, but I knew that I could succeed. I led all fifty of the tiny settlement's inhabitants into Fire-Woods, eventually running out of sight and hiding under a pile of leaves to transform into a chimera.

My chimera form had the head of a tiger, the back legs and head of a goat, and a gigantic snake for a tail. I stomped as loudly as I could, exhaling bright embers of flame. Before long, the herd of ponies located me. I roared, charged up to the front of the herd, and grabbed a stallion in my jaws, before bounding off toward my new hive.

After a few leaps, I transferred the struggling stallion to my goat head. I could have easily outrun the horde of ponies, but I moved slowly enough to let them follow me. Still, within a few minutes, I reached the outskirts of the changeling lands. I jumped over the entrance hole to the hive, not allowing my pursuers to notice the tunnel, so most of the ponies galloped directly into it. As they were galloping at full speed, nearly none of them managed to stop themselves from barreling directly into the gigantic gap in front of them. I easily tackled those few who had managed to jump out of the way down after their neighbors. Once I had trapped my prey, I let my disguise burn off, prepared a pile of leaves, hovered down into the opening tunnel, covered its entrance with wax, and concealed it with red foliage.

It was finally time to hunt ponies! I hovered over a crowd of equines and cocooned the terrified creatures one by one. Then I set off to find the more competent targets. I flew down the dark hall, tracking the hidden ponies by their scents, capturing a cowering mare hiding behind a rock, a small stallion sobbing in a corner, and a silent, perfectly still mare that had buried itself underneath the remains of ancient cocooning materials.

After finding a few more stragglers in the halls, I landed and walked against the wall, listening to the echoes of the last thirty ponies in a small nearby chamber. Once I had reached the mouth of the cavern, I listened to the herd. The group of ponies was planning to stand and fight together. I chuckled, took the form of a grey ratsnake, slithered into the center of the room, and then popped into my true form, cocooning five ponies in seconds. I took to the air and dodged the punches and bucks of the remaining combatants, drew a ring of fire around them, and cocooned the creatures one by one. When there were only a few earth ponies left, one of them jumped up and slammed me to the ground. I hissed, kicked the grey mare off of me, and cocooned her. Then, when the rest of the ponies swarmed around me, I blew them away with a quick blast of magic and trapped them before they could recover.

Spinneret sighed in his sleep when I dragged my fifty new prisoners into his chamber. The massive collection of green, glowing cocoons almost seemed to be a mountain of pillows. I curled up next to him and settled down for the night at his side, hoping that the new wealth of love would help him wake up with me the next day.

When I opened my violet eyes, I found Spinneret beginning to stir. He wasn't conscious, but he would be soon. It was time to cure another changeling, and I knew exactly which one I would bring back next. Antenna was a great warrior when he had the will to fight, but he had always been a bit of a coward, and his love-corruption had brought out all of his worst traits. He would be terrified, in a weakened form, and out of practice. I could force him down to the sunstone easily.


End file.
